iscover 
Speaking on Broker Daily’s Business Accelerator podcast, broker coach and Broker Essentials founder Jason Back said that the commercialisation of large language models (LLMs) over the last few years has pushed the industry to a critical milestone where basic “dabbling” is no longer enough to stay competitive.
“I think we have to discern between large language models and really good technology that’s been around a long time,” Back said.
“In the last three or four years since the retailisation or the commercialisation of things like large language models, where the average Joe, for 20 bucks a month, can have access to what is, you know, potentially the smartest thing in history, that has obviously changed the game.”
According to Back, the year 2026 marks a structural shift where successful operators are categorising themselves as “integrators” or “multipliers” rather than technological observers.
“2026 was more about moving from window shopping to integration, so dabbling and playing and touching and now moving into that full integration,” Back said.
“And then there’s what we would call the multipliers. You know they’re building AI workflows into their business... certain countries and certain businesses have moved holistically into the multipliers. That agent territory.”
A culture of curiosity
As AI-generated content saturates the market, Back said that brokers who rely on generic technology outputs face a distinct branding threat, as automated tools can strip away the personal identity that defines the broking channel.
“I think the danger for brokers would be thinking that if they just use the AI like everybody else is using it, then they’re just at the same level as everybody else and they’re not differentiating themselves and they get lost in that sort of quagmire of beige,” Back said.
To bypass this commoditisation, Back said that elite brokers are those who prioritise entrepreneurial curiosity over pure transaction management.
“There are certain people in our industry who are very entrepreneurial. They’re constantly looking at that Kaizen mentality, that continuous improvement mentality,” he said.
“In fact, I would suggest that broking is their second love and being an entrepreneur is their first.”
Back said that the most immediate, practical application of this mindset is utilising technology to synthesise thousands of disparate lender guidelines instantaneously.
“The ability to understand literally thousands of policies from hundreds of different banks and then be able to again get that and synthesise it down into something that’s digestible very quickly. That’s probably been the biggest change,” he said.
Turning ideas into action
However, accelerating into back-end automation requires brokers to confront the significant privacy and liability exposures that come with sending sensitive client financials to third-party servers.
“No matter what you put into these systems, no matter what toggles you turn on and off, when it comes to things like the ability for those models to learn off your information, that information is going to sit on a server somewhere,” Back said.
“From a risk perspective, let’s lead with caution, let’s lead with understanding that this isn’t risk-free.”
Rather than avoiding the tech due to regulatory fears, Back proposed using advanced language models defensively to audit vendor contracts and software permissions before adoption.
“I grab the whole contract, or I grab the Ts and Cs and I chuck that into a large language model and go, ’Hey, this is my job. This is what I do. This is the information I have. What should I be worried about? What questions should I be asking?’” he said. “Like anything, proceed with caution.”
Technology changing the equation
Ultimately, Back said that as clients increasingly present automated (and often flawed) data gathered from public AI platforms, a broker’s human perspective remains their most valuable asset.
“This hallucination... just because it’s giving you an output doesn’t necessarily mean that output is correct,” Back said.
“I can go to a large language model, I can go to Google and get the facts. What I can’t get is your opinion.”
Moving forward, Back urged business owners to demand more aggressive feedback from their digital tools to drive meaningful operational efficiency.
“Let’s not start at 101 level. Let’s think a little bit more like business owners. And as business owners, you know, we want to move fast, we want to be agile, we want impactful change,” he said.
A deep dive into broker innovation
Jason Back will be emceeing this year’s Broker Innovation Summit, where attendees will be challenged to rethink their approach to AI.
Hosted by Broker Daily, the summit will bring together some of the industry’s leading thinkers to examine the technologies, strategies, and trends set to define the next era of broking.
The one-day summit will take place in Sydney on 24 June and Melbourne on 3 July.
For more information, including speakers and agenda details, click here.
The Sydney summit will be followed up by the Broker Innovation Awards at Ilumina, Sydney, on Wednesday, 24 June 2026.
Find out more and buy tickets for the awards here.
[Related: Embrace ‘ferocious curiosity over convention’, brokers told]
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